Spiritual Principles

When we consider the Spiritual Principles, we often tend to think of
those Principles the way we think about something in a museum - “Oh, that’s very interesting.”   We think about them for a few minutes and then just go on our way, worrying about the things that we have to do and the struggles in life.  Those Spiritual Principles are indeed very interesting but they are somehow “out there.”The problem with that kind of thinking is that it is the very power of our Spiritual Principles that has caused all of our struggles and problems.  Those principles are not something “out there” to be considered but they are to be inwardly known and realized.

In Theosophy, we are told that the Spiritual Principles are Atma, Buddhi and Manas -- Sanskrit terms.  Atma is usually defined as Spirit; Buddhi as the vehicle of Spirit or Spiritual Soul; and Manas as Mind.  But what do those terms mean?  Atma is self-consciousness asleep to manifestation - Spirit is asleep to manifestation.  Atma-Buddhi is the same self-consciousness awake to the spiritual harvest of all universal experience.  Manas is that same self-consciousness but the difference is that Manas is in action.  That’s three expressions of the same thing -- self-consciousness. It is Spirit working through different degrees of substance.

Atma is self-consciousness without any qualification or relation whatever.  Atma-Buddhi is the same self-consciousness but it is accumulated experience. Manas is self-consciousness limited to individual experiences.  There is one life, one consciousness, one power.  And then there is the harvest or memory of it that belongs to
all of us -- universal soul.  Then there is me, using Spirit and universal soul  through the power of mind.

Expressing the meaning of the Spiritual Principles another way,  Buddhi is Atma expressed in the Cosmos; Manas is the expression of Atma in an individual form.  Think of that the next time you are dealing with a difficult person.  You are dealing with Spiritual Principles working through an individual form.  That person may have conditions or problems, self-created by that individual, but it is Atma we should be recognizing in the other.  Every human being is Spirit, spiritual soul and mind in action, no matter how they appear to us. We often appear to ourselves in a negative way but it is temporary.  It is not permanent. 
Nothing can permanently attach to us except what we come to understand and assimilate.

One of the things we lose sight of is the fact that we are spiritual beings because we are in the midst of the results of all the things that we have set up using those powers.  We think, “Maybe I am sinful, maybe I am weak, maybe I am stupid.”  We are looking at a   limited picture of ourselves.  Spiritual wisdom is being aware of what we really are and our own accumulated experience.

All of our actions, whether good, bad or indifferent. are from the same source.  There is one power to will and choose and the conditions we face are what we have chosen to create.  Evil is the misapplication of spiritual powers.  Good and evil are expressions of the use of the same power of Spirit. The difference is how we use it, our motive and
intention.

           QUOTES OF INTEREST

   “Manas, or the Thinker, is the reincar-nating being, the immortal who carries the results and values of all the different lives lived on earth or elsewhere. Its nature becomes dual as soon as it is attached to a body. For the human brain is a superior organism and Manas uses it to reason from premises to conclusions.... This is the lower aspect of the Thinker or Manas, and not, as some have supposed, the highest and best gift belonging to man. Its other, and in theosophy higher, aspect is the intuitional, which knows, and does not depend on reason. The lower, and purely intellectual, is nearest to the principle of Desire, and is thus distinguished from its other side which has affinity for the spiritual principles above. If the Thinker, then, becomes wholly intellectual, the entire nature begins to tend downward; for intellect alone is cold, heartless, selfish, because it is not lighted up by the two other principles of Buddhi and Atma.”
-  W.Q. Judge

   “How frequently do even most important events lie dormant in our memory until awakened by some association of ideas, or aroused to function and activity by some other link... When, therefore, we remember that which we know about the physical and the spiritual principles in man, it is not the fact that our memory has failed to record our precedent life and lives that ought to surprise us, but the contrary, were it to happen.” 

 -  HP Blavatsky

   “Are we not, each one of us, looking at our environment and the world from our own personal point of view? Are we not, each one of us, trying to help ourselves irrespec-tive of others, even competing with and fearing them? And just as the political leaders have failed and are failing because they will not get away from economics and physical-plane existence and develop a universal, spiritual and moral perspective, so also each one of us is bound to meet frustration if we do not get away from the narrow physical sense-life and examine ourselves by the light of moral and spiritual principles.”-

Theosophical
Movement Vol. 72

   “THE HIGHER SELF is Atma the inseparable ray of the Universal and ONE SELF. It is the God above, more than within, us. Happy the man who succeeds in saturating his inner Ego with it!
   THE SPIRITUAL divine EGO is the Spiritual soul or Buddhi, in close
union with Manas, the mind-principle, without which it is no EGO at
all, but only the Atmic Vehicle.
   THE INNER, or HIGHER ‘EGO’ is Manas, the ‘Fifth’ Principle, so
called, independently of Buddhi. The Mind-Principle is only the
Spiritual Ego when merged into one with Buddhi, -- no materialist being supposed to have in him such an Ego, however great his intellectual capacities. It is the permanent Individuality or the ‘Re-incarnating Ego.’"
-  HP Blavatsky

  “Only a few in every century perceive the necessity of maintaining in their own lives the balance between knowledge and love, between head and heart. The great majority show an unbalance – feelings alone without the light of Wisdom predominate in one portion of the majority, while in the other head-learning without soul-wisdom, without compassion and philanthropy and sacrifice, works havoc. ...

Only a few, a small minority in any century, are Esotericists ... real students learning to practise and to promulgate the grand doctrines of the Science of Life. Their task is to produce that balance between knowledge and ethics in their own constitution without which there can be neither the gaining of enlightenment nor the practice of altruism for the good of all.”   -  BP Wadia

        “Theosophical Independence”  is produced monthly by Associates of The United Lodge of Theosophists in Philadelphia.  Comments, questions and contributions for publication may be sent to The United Lodge of Theosophists, 1917 Walnut Street,   Philadelphia, PA  19103.

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